


Cult Ahead, Proceed with Caution

by IuvenesCor



Category: Bastille (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Paranormal Investigators, Banter, Cults, Gen, Humor, a little bit of a crack fic as well, rated for the swears, so many music video references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 17:56:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14117787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IuvenesCor/pseuds/IuvenesCor
Summary: Smith & Co Paranormal Servicesinvestigates the weird, the wild, and the downright occult.And sometimes, on the right sort of day, they heavily question their life choices as well.





	Cult Ahead, Proceed with Caution

**Author's Note:**

  * For [truthtakestime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/truthtakestime/gifts).



> My first fic on AO3 in almost a year, and it's Bastille crack fic. What have I become??
> 
> Blame and thanks go to truthtakestime for summary/title help, and for starting me on the path to becoming a Stormer a good five years back. I love being in this bandom, even as it slowly eats my life away.

They met, as per usual, in the back of Woody’s van.

“Right,” Dan started, clapping his palms together. Sitting still felt a little formal and anticlimactic, but he couldn’t rightly stand with such a low ceiling; thus he took to rocking to and fro cross-legged on the floor. “So we’ve got two leads today. We’re gonna have to split into groups.” Reaching behind his head, he grabbed his backpack off the faded upholstery of the front passenger seat. He fished around inside the bag until he could find the files he’d mocked up and tossed the stapled stacks of notebook paper (unprofessional, but cost efficient!) to the other men. “First one’s a demon menace that’s stalking people.”

Kyle’s brows were doing some strange interpretive dance that Dan read as _‘I honestly don’t know how I feel about this’_ as he browsed the appropriate file. “Now, hold up. When you say ‘horned figure’ right here, what are we talking about? Like, demon goats on all fours or…?” He motioned his hands to loosely indicate hooves.

Dan shook his head. “Nope. More like a deer, actually. But, um, I had one of the stalking victims email me, and he said it looks like a normal guy, just with branching horns sticking out of his skull. Only seen the silhouette, though.”

“So for all we know, it could just be some bloke with a gaudy old headdress doin’ this for laughs?”

“Well, if the headdress allows the wearer to basically teleport at will, sure…”

Forcing a sigh through his teeth, Kyle continued to thumb through the report. “Okay, we’ll call this a fifty-fifty chance of absolute bullshit. Woody, what’ve you got?”

“Um, the…” The man brushed his long, dangling hair behind his ear, turning back to the cover page. “The cult of the spooky mouth-suckers.”

Kyle blinked. “That sounds… weird. And slightly erotic?”

“Yeah. Apparently this pair of lips just pops up out of a bowl of water and…” Woody paused. “Dan, how d’you go about finding this stuff again?”

“It just happens,” he answered, scratching absently at his hand. “I mean, there’s really no point running a paranormal investigation service if everything that comes up is _normal,_ y’know?” He might have thought that was obvious.

“But we could be going after, like, UFOs and ghosts, mate. Run of the mill, standard stuff.” Kyle gesticulated with the papers. “This shit’s just whack.” 

Ducking his head, Dan tried not to bristle. The complaints were commonplace to this point, several months into his and his friends’ collaborative efforts, but he still felt compelled to argue back. “Hey, you guys voted that I coordinate the gigs—”

“Yes, because _you_ begged us while we were all completely leathered to join your little conspiracy club—”

“And you said okay!”

“— _And_ you’re a total control freak, so we kind of had no choice.”

“He’s not wrong,” Woody chimed in.

Dan shot him a weak glare. _Et tu, traitor?_ “Just give it a chance,” he tried. “Please?” 

Quirking his mustache with a skeptical twitch, Kyle nonetheless put his hands up in surrender. “All right, fine. But next time, we do something a little more light-hearted. Like… haunted pet store. Imagine! Ghost cats! _Fun_.”

“Chicken,” Woody whispered.

“Shut up.”

“Children, please,” came Dan’s muttering. Grabbing the tips of his Converse, he continued rocking. “I’m taking the cult case, so you guys will have to fight out where you want to end up.”

With a thoughtful hum, Kyle answered, “I’m not really feeling the whole deer demon thing today unless it’s an _actual_ deer. Or a guy with a headdress.”

Woody frowned in turn. “To be honest,” he said, drawing out his words, “I’m oddly curious about these water lips.”

“Well, either way we know Will can’t argue where to go by virtue of lateness, so at least that’s simple. Dan, why can’t you just go chase that demon bloke?”

He wasted no time shaking his head. “No way, mate. Last thing I want is to have to get exorcized.”

“What, so you’d rather have _us_ be possessed?” The already emphatic Kyle had only spiraled deeper into melodrama. 

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. Listen, if you let me be the leader, then you have to let me make some executive decisions. Will’s on demon duty, and now you two sort it between yourselves.”

His bearded friend squinted daggers at him. “If I get possessed, the first person I’m coming to murder is you, Smith.”

“I don’t think that’s how that works,” Woody offered.

“Oh, so you’re an expert on demonic influence now? Then why don’t _you_ go instigate the stag lord of the underworld’s wrath?”

The repartee was destined to snowball out of their control, but the van’s back doors swung open just in time, hitting them with a blast of autumn air and unanimous silence. There with a thick scarf and his coat buttoned up to his neck was Will, looking sufficiently befuddled and amused all at once. In unison, the three let out a placid “hey Will,” to which the latecomer waved politely. 

“Hi. Are we crashing the bachelor party from hell or something?”

“Bachelor—? Oh, that.” Dan shook his head. _Prime opportunity to get the upper hand._ “Kyle was just saying how excited he is to investigate a deer-headed demon with you.”

“I am not! Don’t listen to his lies, babe!”

“Oh.” It was readily apparent that Will didn’t seem to feel like putting much energy into picking sides. After considering the two for a moment, he clambered into the vehicle, closing the doors behind him and lighting on the floor. Without the slightest hint of complaint, he accepted the papers that Kyle dropped into his lap and skimmed them quietly. Why couldn’t they all be this agreeable?

“You are not sending me off after a demon,” the youngest man continued to argue. “Ain’t happening.”

Dan rolled his eyes. “Okay, fine then. Will and Woody go after the deer guy, and you and me investigate the cult.”

“Oi, now _I_ have to go after the teleporting man-beast?”

“A cult?” It seemed Will wasn’t entirely intent on staying out of the squabbling after all. He lifted his head, eyes following Woody’s deflated gesture towards the other collection of notes, and browsed the proffered page. “Aw, cults are interesting, I want to see that. Wait, actually— no, I lied. Potential brainwashing is not cool. Also if they’re sharing that water, that’s disgustingly unhygienic. I think I will take the deer-man-demon…thing.”

“Look,” Woody continued, “Why can’t we just call Charlie and get him in on this?”

Dan sighed. _Poor Charlie._ “He swore off the business after getting all that bad luck from saying ‘Macbeth’ in the haunted theatre, remember? C’mon, mate, just one time. You get top pick on the next one, all right?”

There was a long, somewhat brooding silence. But, to the ringleader’s delight, Woody eventually shrugged in defeat. “I guess the mouth-suckers aren’t all that exciting anyway.” Then, pulling up one finger and shaking it at Dan and Kyle, he added, “I expect a detailed report. Pics or it didn’t happen.”

“Thanks, baby.” Kyle gave him a thumbs-up. “We’ll do you proud. Please don’t die.”

Those last words gave Will some pause, even as the others were starting to their feet. “Wait, exactly how dangerous is this day going to be?”

As optimistically as possible— which for him involved a lot of hard work and determination to pull off— Dan shrugged and fluffed up his quiff. “I guess we’ll be finding that out?” It would be fine. Definitely. Probably.

…Hopefully.

 

-

 

Fingers gradually embedding deeper into his palms, Dan gulped. Behind him was Kyle’s strained muttering, something along the lines of _fuck you and your stupid investigation gig and I will murder you if the crazies don’t do it first;_ before him was a glass bowl on a podium, and a very eager looking pair of lips. Both were intimidating, but only the latter was properly scary.

It really wasn’t supposed to go this way, whatever was about to become of the present scenario. He’d convinced himself to about ninety-five per cent certainty that these cases were going to turn out as hoaxes, the teleporting deer demon especially. But the cult people were unsettlingly firm about making the two “prospective members” join their little song and dance and _touching the lips_ routine from the starting gate, and there wasn’t any escaping. (They’d tried that already. The odds proved fucking rubbish.) 

Hopefully Will and Woody were all right. Hopefully, they were on their way over right now in response to his SOS text. Hopefully he was more likely to get murdered by Kyle than to get his free will vaporized in an instant by snogging the paranormal. But then again, all of that was highly optimistic thinking.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. _Flew too close to the sun this time, Icarus._ If this was his last moment of freedom, he needed to think of some suitable last words. Ultimately, they came out in a sigh.

“See, Kyle, this is why you don’t argue me on assignments.”

“Arsehole.”

Well, he supposed he deserved that. Still, as the last rites of sanity went, getting yelled at by one of his best friends was a depressing way to go. Between that and the painful way his heart was pounding in his chest, he was starting to hate himself too.

Quite suddenly, however, that hate was diverted to whoever at that moment decided it would be fun to scare the shit out of him and push the doors to the worship room open without warning. Eyes wide, he lifted his head in a panic to assess the new distraction, a split second quicker than the cultists could disband from their tight circle around him. Over their heads, he could make out a familiar face in a particularly impressive floral-patterned suit.

“Hullo! Sorry, folks, I don’t mean to disturb your service.” Charlie Barnes flashed an innocent grin before turning his eyes to Dan and Kyle. “Finally caught up to you, cheeky lads. I told myself, ‘they wouldn’t be stupid enough to hide out in here,’ but what do you know?”

Dan gaped. Kyle, having a better grasp on words at the moment, echoed, “Stupid?!”

A certain gravity fell on the young man’s face as he made a strange expression that Dan took for granted as _play along._ He then placed his attention back on the cultists. “Again, so sorry to barge in uninvited.” Deftly, he opened the wallet in his hand, only displaying it long enough for a glance at what looked like a very unofficial toy badge before shoving it in his pocket. “Detective Inspector Charlie Barnes. Those two men are criminals on my radar and I’ve come to take them in. So if you don’t mind, I’ll just—”

“You should sit down and join us.” This came from the unsettlingly even, monotone voice of the cult receptionist, for lack of a better word. “Our service has just begun.”

Charlie’s brows rose. “Um, no, but thank you. I’m sure it’s a lovely time, but I’m very much on the clock with this policing business and I’m afraid your new initiates are in quite a bit of trouble with the authorities. Unfortunately, I’ll have to ask you to release them into my custody.”

_“You should join us.”_ The group almost collectively shifted forward as the receptionist repeated herself. In reflex, Dan stepped back and found himself knocking into Kyle. If Charlie could keep this up long enough for a gap to form in the crowd…

“I’m going to have to ask you to comply nice and quietly,” Charlie insisted, inching to the open doors as the cultists approached. “It would be a right shame if a scuffle had to break out.” Then, suddenly, he pointed to the opposite corner of the room. “Oh my God, is that a _ghost?_ ”

Conveniently, the cultists were nearly as easy to confuse as they were stubborn. Everyone in unison turned to find the supposed phantom; as for Dan and Kyle, they found their gap and zig-zagged out of the crowd to follow Charlie, who quickly turned heel and bolted.

Panic pushed Dan forward, even as Kyle started to outpace him down the hallway. He knew he was shit for running, but it hadn’t taken even four seconds for the cultists to start after them, and the last thing he needed in his life was to go through the whole ‘last rites of sanity’ thing _again._ Screw those lips in a bowl, he wasn’t getting trapped again.

Charlie shoved his way through the front entrance. Kyle was able to slip out before the door swung back, but Dan was left swearing up a storm and second guessing all the important life decisions he’d recently made as he ploughed shoulder first into the metal. Why didn’t he just choose the stalking case? Why couldn’t he have had some foresight into this mess? Why was running _so stupid?_

But, in a better streak of fortune, he recognized his friend’s ride fairly close by in the car park; despite the fire of exhaustion burning in his legs and lungs, he pushed himself for the final stretch. At the sound of skidding shoes and the click of unlocking doors, all three investigators piled into the small sedan within quick succession. 

“Are they still following us?” Charlie asked over the sound of the engine.

The car jerked into motion and pulled through the empty aisle in front of them just as Dan twisted in his seat to look through the rear windshield. There, right outside the entrance, a small cluster of the cultists gathered with no attempt to give further chase. “No,” he reported with a winded sigh. “I think we’ll be in the clear.”

Charlie hummed. “For now, anyway.”

Before Dan could properly question what the younger meant by that, Kyle sounded off. “Charlie Barnes, where the hell did you come from?”

“… You’re welcome?”

For that, Charlie received an eyeroll from the man. “Yes, obviously, we’re very bloody grateful you saved us from a fate worse than death, et cetera, et cetera. But you’re supposed to be out of the business and you are definitely not an inspector.”

“Is it the clothes that give it away? It’s the only matching suit I had on hand that didn’t cost me an arm and a leg.” Charlie’s sarcasm was almost easy to miss. Was it even sarcasm at all? 

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good look. It _literally_ suits you— but I mean, you can’t just come galloping in to save the day and not have a reason for it.”

“You don’t believe in coincidences?”

Even Dan was curious now. “C’mon, mate, don’t bullshit us,” he sighed.

There was a sizeable pause filled only with the muffled sounds of the road before Charlie relented. “All right. So… it kind of starts with my departure from the agency. You know the haunted theatre job?”

“Mhm.”

“Sure.”

“Right. Well… I may have exaggerated a tiny bit about the bad luck thing. Long story short, I needed an excuse to part ways with you guys.”

Kyle made a face. “How about long story long, then? ‘Cos otherwise I’m just gonna think that was a really dickish thing to do.”

“I wanted to investigate something with a little less hobgoblins and what have you, but it was a lot more dangerous. I knew you all would get roped in, and I just didn’t want to take that chance, but it looks like we still ended up crossing paths anyway.”

Dan fished his fingers through his hair absently as he let the words soak in. “Wait, what have you been investigating?”

“Well, still the same stuff, technically. Unexplained paranormal events, or so everyone thinks. But there’s been something deeper going on. Most of them are hoaxes, but they’re _coordinated_ hoaxes. Dangerous ones, at that.” Charlie nodded, eyes fixed on the road. “That cult. It’s not real.”

Kyle’s expression went flat. “Charlie. We just _ran away_ from that cult. We almost had to fucking _kiss_ the kinky lips that control the whole damn thing and put people in a fucking trance. How is that not real?”

“It’s not!” The young man sighed. “Okay, the cult is real. But the lips aren’t. It’s just a well built mechanism in the podium, the mind control is in the water.”

“Uh, Charlie…” Dan blinked slowly. “Are you okay, mate?”

“Hear me out. There’s a high potency hallucinogenic drug that’s mixed into the water. That’s what puts everyone in such a trance, and it has addictive qualities that makes them want to come back for more.”

Admittedly, that should be easier to believe than the occult coming to life and initiating all this weird shit— and probably was the safer alternative in the long run. But Dan still had a time trying to wrap his brain around the theory.

“Why would anyone want to go through all that, though?” he asked. “That’s a weird way to start a religion.”

“And therein lies the rub. It’s not about the religion aspect, it’s about the shock value. It’s about making headlines, something to capitalize off of. Who would profit from all the attention of a crazy headline about ordinary people getting snared in by a cult?”

“The… people putting out the headlines?” Kyle offered.

“On target. I looked into the receptionist woman who heads up the cult’s meetings. Guess who she used to work for right until the time the cult started gaining members? WWCOMMS.”

Wild World Communications? Well, they certainly knew how to make waves with their headlines, and their popularity wasn’t to be denied. WWCOMMS was everywhere, wherever you went. They weren’t just a simple news outlet anymore, they were a media giant. And now Charlie was suddenly accusing them of drugging people, standing like a modern David against the proverbial Goliath.

“This isn’t their only hoax,” Charlie continued. “And it’s putting people’s lives at risk. I followed the trail from that suicide at their main building, the woman who jumped, and it led me to way more than I bargained for. And you lads, apparently. So… that’s my story.”

Kyle stroked his mustache thoughtfully. “All right. Say all this is true. What’s your next move?”

“I’m going to have to step away from the cult case for now. I’d gone there to scope the building with the intention of doing more or less what you guys did, but obviously that won’t work and our covers are completely blown. We’ll have to find another way to end that operation— we definitely can’t just walk back in there.”

Dan opened his mouth, not entirely sure what was going to come out of it and ready to start suggesting plans on the fly. He knew better than that, because after this case he really ought to quit investigating entirely and cut his losses, but the chase after the UK’s favourite news outlet had a dangerous allure to it. However, the vibration of his mobile cut off whatever words he was about to conjure.

At the same time that he wrestled the device out of his pocket, Kyle pulled out his own mobile as well. They both found a text from Woody— SOS, and an address.

“Hang on,” Kyle muttered. His complexion turned pale as a sheet. “That address… Dan, did you text Woody or Will that we were all right?”

Dan’s heart sank. “No. I’m guessing you didn’t?”

Charlie pried his stare from the road, glancing around the front of the car anxiously. “What? What’s going on?”

“We sent them an SOS to bail us out at the cult building and didn’t text to tell them we got out.”

The silence was palpable. “So… because you two didn’t give them the all clear, they went to the building.”

“And are now sending us an SOS,” finished Kyle’s exasperated sigh.

“So nice, we get to do it twice,” Dan droned sarcastically.

“Well…” Charlie shrugged, pulling down a side street. “Maybe this is our chance to redeem ourselves, get some extra intel if there’s time. More investigating, just like old times, eh?”

That was fine. Let Charlie be the optimist. Dan would just be saving up his energy and sulking in the back seat until they arrived, hating his life choices once again.

He should have just been a musician.


End file.
